Citizen K

I am citizen K; A proud citizen of India. I am proud of India only and only because I strongly believe that one’s Dharma and Motherland; in spite of all its shortcomings, is still better than someone else’s Dharma and Motherland.

The last some days have been interesting.  Interesting; because there is no other way to describe it. Do we as Indian become sarcastic or indifferent towards this? We can if we choose to, but it’ll hardly make much of a difference. We’d just be closing our eyes while standing in front of a charging bull. Do we show anger? We can but then what is it going to lead to? We can expect all men to show their anger at the right place, in the right manner and more importantly, towards the right person.  We have been reacting in similar terms through all the blasts, riots, kidnappings, inflations, pseudo-wars etc.

What happened in Mumbai is a mockery. Not just on Indians, the politicians, the intelligence,  the armed forces or the utopian concept of democracy. It is a mockery of everything and nothing at all.  Just now, the honourable Home Minister of India, Mr. Shivraj Patil has ‘taken a moral responsibility’ for the ‘tragic incident’ and has hence tendered his resignation.  The only responsibility that Mr. Patil has taken, is that he was incompetent to handle the position which was given to him. Where was his moral responsibility when blasts were happening all over India? How come his morality got a wake up call only and only when assembly elections are taking places in Delhi, MP and Rajasthan?  Had Mr. Patil’s moral conscience really woken up he would have vowed to catch all the people who were responsible for this, he would have made sure that Dawood got extradited or at least mysteriously ‘neutralized’ on Pakistani soil. And when everything would have been hunky dorey then perhaps he should have gone on national television and should have said “I did the duties which were entrusted upon me, but the finger pointing and mud slinging by the opposition, the media and even my own colleagues has hurt me a lot. Hence, I choose to step down in the high point of my career as Home Minister”. That would have been poetic.

Ladies and Gentlemen, least we forget; Mr. Patil is just a fall-guy. He is just a crash test dummy who needs to hit the wall at 200 km/hr so that the actual driver of the car remains safe. We are all collectively responsible for everything that happens. Why is it that when it comes to basking in the glory of winning a test match or 20-20, we become collectively, a happy set of Indians? But when it comes to taking responsibility for a screw-up, we start pointing fingers. All the politicians that we blame are eventually just illegitimate children of our own misdeeds.

Finally, a note on the media coverage. The Indian media has been the only entity in the past few days to have shown some consistency. The Indian media had made a name for itself being blood sucking hounds and parasites, for being opportunistic to the point of fornicating their own sisters in order to make a breaking news story on incest relationship, for being pimps in the hands of those with money, power and both. And they have lived up to that. In its own way, the Indian media is a beacon. It is beacon of motivation on what can be achieved by being consistent. Consistently good or consistently bad, is a different ballgame altogether.

Perfect...

In Oscar Wilde’s only published novel “The picture of Dorian Gray”, the protagonist decides not to put his best work of art on display, because he is afraid that he has put too much of himself into it. And thus, is against the proposition of putting himself before the lewd and cynical eye of the public at large. When I first read this book, a couple of years back, I doubted the merits of such an act. After all, it is a dream of any artist to paint his magnum opus; that one stroke that defines his stroke of genius. But now that I’ve thankfully matured into a greater and more profound level of understanding, I can quite see the reasons behind such an act of denouncement.

All our lives, we strive for perfection. A state where we are at peace with ourselves; a state of self-actualization. A vast majority of us are blessed with the destiny of not attaining this perfection. Thanks to all the worldly pressures, pleasures and distractions. But then, there are an unfortunate few who stumble upon this stage, even if inadvertently. Now, that you have achieved perfection, what next? Where does one go from here? It is like a darkness that surrounds our eyes just after we finish a 200m dash. Only this time, this darkness is more perpetual.

I should add here that I’m not contemplating something that is completely abstruse and relegated to the realms of arts and humanities. This is something that we all know and practice throughout our lives; in all forms of public domain. When a person joins a sales department, he is warned not to show that much zeal and efficiency in the very beginning, because the sales target are, by definition, unattainable. It is said that the more you achieve, more is expected of you in the next quarter. And who could forget the famous Hawthorne effect? In this ground breaking study conducted in early 1930s, it was found that the gangs of workers were deliberately under-performing under an impression that if they finish the work before time then they will become obsolete that sooner.

I, as a matter of fact, am quite far from the level of perfection that I’ve set for myself. But I’m quite aware of the fact that I may stumble upon it sooner than I plan to. But here lies the clincher, I plan to.... after all what is life without a little bit of a death-wish?

Rambling inconsequentially...

I seem to have seceded into a strange sense of restlessness. A restlessness where I am in equal anticipation of things to happen... And also afraid, that they might... A restlessness, where everything matters and, yet, nothing does.... What am I waiting for? What is it that still eludes me? Why is it that the more I try to stay calm and go to sleep, more I see my legs shaking to a subliminal vibe? And last, but perhaps more importantly.... Why am I even bothering to ask such questions? I don’t think I even care to know what the answer might be.

How does one know where one stands if one doesn’t know where one started or how long one has travelled? Why is it important to know where one stands? Because the place of one’s existence in life, is unique. No two beings can exist at a same place at the same time. So where one is; is of no consequence to anyone else. It is only sick to seek gratification by trying to know more about something about which no one would be interested in knowing and even if they did, would be plainly unfathomable to understand.

For example, why am I rambling like this? What is it that is bothering me? Is there anything at all that is really bothering me? Why am I making my life miserable by constructing such long complex sentences and trying to join them together using a myriad labyrinth of punctuation marks? A strange fight to beat those frustrating green wavy lines of MS Word which remind me that man-made algorithms are better at a language, which man has perfected long before its very existence. Would you understand? And more importantly, would you care?

Plagiarised Originality

It has been quite a while since my last post on this blog. Strangely enough, I don’t have anything to say even now! It is so difficult to say anything original nowadays. As if everything that could be said about anything on earth, has already been said.

Come to think of it; what originality is actually left? Our thinking is predominantly based on what we have learnt, what we have learnt, is predominantly based on the experiences of other people or from books written by someone else, regarding life as they saw it. We know that red is red, because we are taught that it is “red”. What difference would it have made had one learnt to call red as orange from the very beginning of life?

Even in terms of everyday life, we end up doing what someone else has already done. I accept the fact that we end up doing it in our own special way, but there is nothing radical in it, is there? We end up filling into our boss’s shoes, we end up fulfilling the dreams of our parents... the dreams that they must have seen after seeing someone else live it.... we become husbands and wives and try to emulate the happiness and behavior of husbands and wives around us.... husbands and wives who are probably doing the same thing. Our homes either take a leaf out of Gothic, Rajasthani, Mughal or South Indian style of architecture; and even when we ‘try to break away from the rut’, we end up copying some vague modernistic design! Even, our radicalism is a product of inheritance!

I do not propose to start a movement wherein we break all the set rules and barriers and make something new... a new order..... sounds familiar?.... that was Communism, a hundred years back!... My point is... in spite of doing what someone else has already done.... we don’t seem to do it any better, do we?... so instead of setting a new world order, why not set this world into order based on what we already know or do?

Think.... Cerebrate....

Second Chances

An egalitarian would like to believe that we are all born equal with similar capabilities, strengths and weaknesses and hence, deserve to live in an equal society. But I've always begged to differ. After all, history has proved that equality has never been Man's forte. Man has always survived and flourished in a society segregated on the basis of caste, religion, gender or race. I have to admit to admit that Men are born unequal.

You see a Prince Harry or Prince William enjoying royalty in their early twenties, you see a Raphael Nadal sizing up to the brilliance of Roger Federer (case in point, French Open Finals, 2008) when he is hardly twenty, you see Shah Rukh Khan running after trains in Europe of DDLJ when he was in his mid- twenties..... and then you see, yours truly, a 35 yr old in the garb of a 22 yr old waiting for middle age to settle in at any time!..... If you care to observe you also see people in their early twenties still grappling with their graduations.... and the unfortunate many, who dont even get a chance to go that far in life.... It is tough to imagine that we were all born in the same earth in the era of 1985-1988 and yet we have all become so different from one another....

Psychology has long tried to settle the fight between innate capabilities and the impact of environment on personality development... the battle of Nature vs Nurture.... Some believe that we are already what we are destined to become, by the time we are born.... why still others believe that the environment we group up in has a louder say in how we eventually turn out to be.... But it has never been a case of either-or..... its always 'and'..... the circumstances under which we take birth and the environment that nourishes us.... both are equally important....
There is something to learn here too.... you see, if both these things are equally important then this automatically proves that nature by default has given Man a life line.... you see, if success is 100 then Nature and Nurture would be 50-50 each.... hence, even if one gets an unfair deal in one, he can always try and compensate for it in other.... so if you got on 20/50 in the birth stage of life, make sure that you get 50 in the growth stage of life.... If we carry this logic forward than it defeats the whole caste system on which our society has flourished so far..... Birth may be a water-tight demarcation.... it may brand you as a caste, sub-caste or sect for the rest of your life.... but you still have the nourishment.... you can still learn from the environment.... because environment is still equal for everybody....

And all this time, I thought that life never gave a second chance....